As if my reasons for choosing them were of course so obvious that they needed neither exposition nor explanation, I allowed to speak for themselves excerpts that should have been framed very differently and made the object of serious scrutiny, and so–while I still disagree with some of the points people in this thread have argued–what I wrote certainly sounded like I was sympathetic to Judt’s nostalgia and apologia in ways that I most decidely am not. It serves no purpose, therefore, to continue to respond to people’s critiques, either of the original post or of the comments I have made in the context of that post–except to apologize more explicitly for not having caught the transphobia–because I think it will only devolve into a self-defensiveness that will, in the end, prove nothing. The post is as bad as the post is, and no amount of arguing “what I really meant” or of responding to people’s accusations of my own insensitivity towards women, or people who have been harassed, etc. to “prove my credentials,” so to speak, will change that.

I do, however, want to say something very brief in response to this, written by CassandraSays:

I’m curious what these questions that could be worth exploring that you thought this article might raise were

The business of teaching and learning is often far more emotionally, psychologically and erotically messy than we like to admit–on both sides of the professional lines that we all agree professors, male or female, should not cross. I teach at a community college. I am married to a former student, so is one of my male colleagues; two of my female colleagues are married to their former students; a gay male colleague is “married”–which I put in scare quotes only because it is, unfortunately, not a legal marriage–to a former student aide. Two of my former male colleagues were forced into retirement because they were known to sleep with their students and one, at least, if the information I have is correct, did so for grades; I know of one female colleague who was falsely accused of sexual harassment; one female colleague who slept with a student while he was still in her class, and I know of at least two other colleagues, one male and one female, who have slept with former students.

Of the instances I have just listed, there are some which clearly cross the line; in other cases, I know personally that they did not; and in others, I just don’t know. In fact, for the purposes of what I am interested in, what Judt’s piece made me think of, whether or not the line was crossed is sort of irrelevant. Not because it doesn’t matter to the people involved–obviously, there need to be consequences if a professor sexually harasses a student–but because in both kinds of situation, those where the ethics are unimpeachable and those where the unethical nature is clear, the desire that is at stake arose in the context of teaching and learning. Judt’s piece, with all its flaws, brought me back to that as an issue worth taking on, both for what thinking deeply about it might reveal about desire and for what it might reveal about teaching and learning.

My own haste and laziness resulted in a post that was about something entirely different.